Inside the Museum of London

With panto season firmly upon us, digital curator, Ellie Miles, goes back 200 years to meet some of pantomime’s earliest characters.

Whilst working on the theatrical portraits for collections online, I kept finding the same characters appearing. In the left hand side of this print you can see Harlequin, wearing a mask. To Harlequin’s right, in blue, is the character ‘Pierrot’. Beatrice blogged about Pierrot costumes a couple of years ago. She wrote about Gertie Millar’s Pierrot costume, which Millar wore in 1909, but this print is from 1802, when Pierrot was just one the characters in the Harlequinade.

I started to read about the history of Harlequin and Pierrot. Harlequin was the star of the ‘Harlequinade’, a conventional part of pantomime. Although London had two official theatres with royal patents, it also boasted a range of illegitimate theatrical enterprises. The Harlequinade became popular in London’s illegitimate theatres, where exiled Parisian actors and Italian commedia dell’arte performers delivered comic mimes. Because these performances were mimed they were not considered serious theatre, so they were beyond the jurisdiction of the theatrical patent system.

Pierrot began life as one of the principal characters of the Harlequinade, alongside Harlequin, Columbine (Harlequin’s love interest) and Pantaloon (Columbine’s father.) The four characters delivered comic scenes, often making use of the commedia dell’arte’s batacchio, commonly known as the ‘slapstick’, which you can see Harlequin holding above. These conventional characters would have been immediately recognisable to the audience, and although their exact adventures varied, each had established characteristics. Pierrot was usually Pantaloon’s servant, and in London versions of the harlequinade, was performed as a naïve buffoon.

Pierrot was a simple character in London pantomimes, without the romantic complexity of his continental counterparts. Joseph Grimaldi was the London-born son of an Italian actor, and he revolutionised the role. Grimaldi performed this character as a clown, bringing influences from English comedy to the Pierrot role. It was so successful that it was not long before Pierrot was replaced by Grimaldi’s invention of the role of clown. Even Harlequin was eventually displaced by the popularity of Grimaldi’s clown, which became the central character. The Museum of London has several objects connected with Grimaldi, including some of his costume:

Grimaldi’s creative performances mean he is credited with introducing the modern clown. He was a specialist in physical comedy; particularly tumbling and falling, although this took a toll on his health as he aged. Many of Grimaldi’s innovations outlasted the Harlequinade, and shaped pantomime for years to come: he introduced the first pantomime dame and the tradition of audience participation.

Grimaldi’s clown replaced the Pierrot character in London’s pantomimes, but did not supersede Pierrot’s popularity elsewhere in Europe. Just as Grimaldi’s clown outlived the Harlequinade, so too did Pierrot, whose naivete became a sympathetic quality. By 1909, when Millar wore the costume and Beatrice takes up the story, Pierrot was not just a character in the harlequinade, but appeared in plays, ballets, poetry, fiction, music and even early films. Pierrot became symbolic of the sad clown, living on alongside Grimaldi’s rambunctious comic archetype.

When I mentioned our Chéruit dress aeons ago, I promised I would explain how it came into our collection. This has been preying on my mind for far too long, partly because, as you will see, things are a little complicated. Here is my attempt to cut a long story short and try to make sense of something that I am not sure I wholly understand myself at this point. You might want to get yourself a cup of tea …

Our Chéruit gown was part of a large group of womenswear covering the years between 1900 and 1930ish that was donated in December 1942 by The Hon. Mrs Gilmour. According to a note in our register, all of the objects ‘were formerly in the possession of Lady Charles Montagu (formerly Viscountess Chelsea & later Lady [Henry] Meux). Some of them may have been worn by the Duchess of Marlborough & others by Admiral Sir Henry Meux’s first wife.’

I you have kept count you will have noticed that four different women are mentioned in this short paragraph, one of whom seems to have had three different names (husbands). Disentangling this genealogical bundle was a bit more difficult than expected but I persisted. Chéruit dresses are difficult to come by and I was intrigued to find one chez nous.

Let’s start with the person who seems to be our main protagonist / prime suspect: the former Viscountess Chelsea (below). Born in 1869, Mildred Cecilia Harriet was the daughter of Henry Sturt, 1st Baron Alington and his first wife Lady Augusta Bingham. In 1892 Mildred, as we shall call her from now on, married Henry Arthur Cadogan, Viscount Chelsea (b. 1868). The couple had five daughters followed by a male heir in 1903, who sadly died only seven years later. Mildred’s fifth daughter, Victoria Laura Cadogan (1901-1991) married Lieutenant-Colonel Sir John Little Gilmour of Craigmillar, 2nd Baronet in 1922 (they divorced in 1929). Victoria is very likely The Hon. Mrs Gilmour who donated the group of objects, four months after her mother’s death.

This all seems relatively straightforward but how do the Marlboroughs come into the story and who is Sir Henry Meux’s first wife? The husband of our main protagonist, Viscount Chelsea, died on 2 July 1908 at the age of only 40. Two years later, on 18 April 1910, Mildred married Sir Hedworth Lambton (b. 1856), ‘quietly’, as befitted a widow. According to The Times (19 April 1910, page 13) the bride wore ‘a costume of pale blue satin charmeuse, the bodice trimmed with cream lace net and having a yoke of fine cream’, accessorised with a large straw hat adorned with a ‘long pale blue ostrich feather’. We also learn that ‘her ornaments included a necklace of pearls’ (I love the idea of having ‘ornaments’!).

If you have been keeping up, you will have wondered why there is no mention of a ‘Hedworth Lambton’ in our register note. This is where it will start to sound as if I am making things up. In 1899 Lambton, a naval comander, met Valerie Lady Meux (b. 1847) – pronounced ‘Mews’ – the famous subject of three portraits by Whistler (one of which below).

Lady Meux was so impressed by the ‘hero of Ladysmith’ that she made Lambton heir to the large fortune left by her late husband Sir Henry Bruce Meux (d. 1900) on the condition that Lambton should adopt her name (Meux, not Valerie). When Lady Meux died on 20 September 1910 (six months after Lambton and Mildred’s wedding), the couple duly obliged. I suspect the person writing ‘Admiral Sir Henry Meux’s first wife’ in the museum register thought the ‘real’ Henry Meux and Admiral Hedworth Lambton – aka Meux – were one and the same and I don’t blame them.

Valerie certainly knew a thing or two about presentation but I find it hard to believe that Mildred would have kept the clothes of her husband’s benefactor. Stylistically the Chéruit gown fits into the period just before the First World War, but even if it had been made before Valerie’s death in 1910, the gown does not strike me as having been worn by someone in her sixties.

Hedworth Meux died in September 1929 and Mildred became a widow for the second time. A little more than year later, she remarried. Despite the fact that the groom, Lord Charles William Augustus Montagu (b. 1860) had just turned 70, it was his first marriage. Lord Charles and Mildred had been photographed together more than 30 years earlier at the famous Devonshire House Ball in 1897. In real life a stockbroker and partner of Montagu, Stanley & Co., Lord Charles, fittingly, attended as Charles I while Lady Chelsea, looking incredibly youthful despite already having had her first three daughters, apparently impersonated an Italian flower girl. Interesting, non? Lord Charles died in 1939, followed by Mildred three years later.

Now we just have to figure out the connection to ‘a’ Duchess of Marlborough. In 1920 Mildred’s fourth daughter (and the donor’s sister), The Hon. Alexandra Mary Hilda Cadogan married Charles Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of Blandford, who became the 10th Duke of Marlborough in 1934. Alexandra was born in 1910 and would have been too young to wear the Chéruit dress herself. Maybe the register note referred to a previous Duchess of Marlborough? But which one?

Charles Spencer-Churchill’s mother was arguably the most famous of the ‘dollar princesses’, the name given to the rich American heiresses marrying British aristocrats in the late 19th/early 20th century. Consuelo Vanderbilt (1877-1964) became the wife of the 9th Duke of Marlborough in late 1895 but the couple separated in 1906 and divorced in 1921. According to her autobiography The Glitter & the Gold, first published in 1953, Consuelo began to go to Paris at least once a year in the late 1880s. She frequently bought clothes in the French capital, usually at Worth’s. Her dresses seem to have been picked first by her mother, then by her husband, and Consuelo was not entirely happy with their choices. Maybe she turned to another couturier once she could?

Madeleine Chéruit (immediately above) and Consuelo were both drawn by Paul César Helleu (1859-1927), but so were many other beautiful women, including the Duke of Marlborough’s second wife, Gladys Deacon (1881-1977), yet another contender for original ownership of the gown. Both Consuelo and Gladys (below) were also painted by Giovanni Boldini, another connoisseur of picturesque female beauty.

If you have not fallen asleep, you will be aware that we are now left with three realistic options for original owner/wearer of our Chéruit dress. First up is Mildred (still a bit of a known unknown) who was in her early 40s in 1910-12, the likely date of the gown. Consuelo was in her mid 30s and although she had ceased to be the Duchess of Marlborough when the register note was written, by now any confusion in the mind of the note’s writer can be excused. Thirdly we should consider the second Duchess of Marlborough, Gladys Deacon, according to one connoisseur, once ‘the world’s most beautiful woman in the world’. Separated from the Duke in 1931, she might have left the dress behind when abandoning Blenheim Palace, the Marlborough’s ancestral seat, after the Duke’s death in 1934.

Will we ever know? Well … we might …. There are some other avenues of investigation I have not yet fully explored. The Times online archive has to be raided more systematically than I have done so far. I need to read Hugo Vickers’ biography of Gladys Deacon. And there might be a photo, drawing, painting somewhere showing one of the women – or someone I have not even thought of – in the Chéruit dress.

This turned out to be quite an unhappy tale, full of separations and loss. I am probably reading too much into it, but it seems fitting that the embellishments on our gown are not shiny but matte, and a little bit scratched.

I have just come back from a so-called ‘long’ weekend in Paris. For reasons too boring to explain I did not manage to see the Louis Vuitton – Marc Jacobs exhibition but I was determined to look at the latest offering of the Palais Galliera. I am still super-annoyed (super – or the more French su-pehr – is my most favourite recent word) that I only ever saw photos of the Galliera’s display at the Musée Bourdelle last year, which looked su-pehr-amazing (check out this set by another fan).

The Galliera, the Museum of Fashion of the City of Paris, has been closed for essential refurbishment ever since their exhibition Sous l’Empire des Crinolines finished in April 2009. During this period the museum had a few exhibitions ‘hors les murs’, which – French not being my su-pehr strong point – seems to mean literally outside the walls/extramural but also has some more vague, outside of expectations/experimental-ish connotations.

The museum’s latest offering consists of two exhibitions (scroll down), one predominantly black, the other white, staged near the Gare d’Austerlitz in a structure designed by Jakob+MacFarlane that also houses the French Institute of Fashion and is called – in Franglais – Les Docks, Cité de la Mode et du Design. (Be warned, there isn’t much in terms of cafés near Les Docks and the apparently cool Café Praliné that is part of it does not seem to open on Sunday mornings.  If you don’t function without coffee have one before you head out there.)

This is not an exhibition review, rather some musings on what happens to a curator while he or she is on a busman’s holiday. These days I find it really hard to concentrate on what is exhibited without being constantly distracted by the how. This not uncommon curatorial affliction is related to another maladie, which hopefully someone will find a good name for. I am talking about the painful sensation some dress curators feel when seeing badly executed costumes in ‘period dramas’.

Back to Paris and Monsieur (or should that be Señor?) Balenciaga. At the heart of the exhibition are 70 or so historic dress objects collected by the designer which are juxtaposed with his own creations from the archives of the fashion house and the Galliera. While some of the ‘dialogues’ were fascinating (we particularly favoured the variations on stripes below), I found myself mostly obsessing about the exhibition design and the object mounts.

About fifteen, maybe even more, years ago opening museum stores to ‘the public’ seemed to be the big thing. I first encountered this trend, possibly belatedly, in Vienna at the MAK, still one of my favourite museums (I have quite a long list of FM’s, though). I always liked the idea of ‘open storage’, possibly because I want to see everything and because I still think stores are magical spaces that not enough people are allowed to see. (I know there are a lot of ‘issues’ with displaying the entire or most of your collection with minimal ‘interpretation’ but that’s for another day …)

Unsurprisingly I think making the Balenciaga exhibition space look like a museum depot is pretty genius. Not only does it give you the impression that you are somewhere you would not normally get access to, the design is also practical. Opening the large drawers at the bottom of the units means that visitors are prevented from touching the objects on the dummies behind. Maybe the Galliera should have gone one step further and asked us all to don lab coats?

Below are a few images of other bits and pieces that caught my eye, mainly the use of bent strips of ethafoam (if that’s what it is) to build structures for hats, as well as the jewellery and shoe mounts, and the labels and their holders on the back of the metal units, which are of course in keeping with the store theme.

This experience alone, even without coffee, was rather marvelous but right next door is exhibition no. 2: White Drama – a display of all the pieces from the Comme des Garçons spring/summer 2012 show. Have a look here for more images and videos with the Galliera’s su-pehr director Olivier Saillard’s talking about the reasons behind the exhibition.

I loved the plastic bubble showcases! Not just because I like a bit of futurism but I also suspect – rightly or wrongly – that they are cheaper than glass or plexi showcases, one of the main reasons dress exhibitions can be so very expensive. If you are displaying 21st and post-war 20th century dress you can often get away with open display, but not if all your objects are all white. I could not quite figure out how the bubbles worked apart from noticing their large, round, zip-up doors and their individual air management units.

In the videos Saillard mentions the positive effect of the Galliera’s closure: it provided the opportunity to set up some kind of exhibition research laboratory – with merveilleuse results.

I want to leave you with a little more magic. While doing some fact-checking I came across a performance by Tilda Swinton that will take place between 29 September and 1 October (very, very sadly sold out). For The Impossible Wardrobe, conceived by Saillard, Swinton ‘learned the minute gestures of the fashion archivist and invented others, chaste or romantic’, which she will use to ’showcase’ precious dresses.  I so, so, so wish I had a ticket and cannot wait to see the film shot during rehearsals by Katerina Jebb.

Finally, I thought you might like these two Neapolitan nativity figures that peer out of their drawers towards the end of the Balenciaga exhibition. I am not entirely sure what it is about them that I find so fascinating. Maybe that they seem to have seen it all and that they look as if they feel for us?

We have been rearranging our mannequins. Again. Moving things around is definitely one of the big stories of my life and artificial bodies loom large. I’ve lost count of how many times I have tried to come up with a good solution for mannequin storage in this and a previous job (life?). The image above was taken about two years ago during one of our previous attempts when I first thought of describing this super-exciting part of my job.

I am writing about it now because I think we have come up with something not altogether bad this time. But I am also hoping for space and time-saving suggestions from you!

This is the back story: we have a lot of fibreglass mannequins, mainly torsos, from previous temporary exhibitions and the last incarnation of our permanent display. Many of these bodies were made for specific, mainly 19th century, outfits. In my experience, bodies for particular clothes are often kept – though rarely re-used – until after about ten years they are finally given to someone else or thrown into a skip with relish, depending on their state.

At a previous cull this is just what we did (both options) but we now have a new reason to retain as many bodies as we can. Our textile conservator Christine is rapidly becoming, or already is, an expert in making bust forms out of paper strips and glue (all conservationally sound, I let you know). Because she needs a body to start off with, we are now very keen to keep different shapes. We might never use the torsos for display but they could easily form (haha) the basis of a papier-mâché construction.

So this time round we looked at our torsos and their limbs with slightly different eyes and decided only to get rid of multiples of the same shape. We were hoping we could dispose of a few bodies or at least rationalise their storage as we continue to have space issues, like everyone else, I suppose. (In my imagination, though, mannequins at the Metropolitan Museum are stored in vast vaults, beautifully wrapped with their measurements and photos attached, and are fed by lab-coated elves at night).

I did not take a ‘before’ photo so you have to imagine several shelves worth of fibreglass torsos taking up a lot of space despite having been separated from their limbs to push them closer together. We usually cover mannequins in large bubble wrap bags. We don’t write anything on the outside because we found that while this might be useful, it is too much hassle to match up bags with mannequins after use when you don’t have much time (and we normally don’t). Like most carers for mannequins we have experimented with photographing and measuring the whole lot and keeping this information as a hard copy and/or electronically. This makes a good project for volunteers but while it allows to easily identify useful bodies in the file, you then still have to locate them in the store. Assigning a permanent base to all our mannequins and keeping track just seemed too much extra work (I bet they have such a file and permanent mannequin locations at the Met …).

Our storage method meant that a) our mannequins were all very nicely protected and b) we never used any of them for any purpose. (I’m not talking about our dressmaker’s dummies, which are in constant use, or our relatively new full-figure mannequins, which we tend to employ when photographing 20th and 21st century clothing.)

After donning our lab coats, Christine and I got out as many bodies as we could fit on our large table and roughly ordered them in some way by size and/or shape. We then tried to reunite each body with its limbs if appropriate (thankfully a previous curator had made sure everything was numbered). We did not find any bodies that were very similar so decided to keep the whole lot this time. Rather than taking photos and compiling yet another list, we took a few measurements and wrote those on masking tape stuck to each torso. If a torso was made for a specific object, we put a note on our database. We did not cover the torsos but just put them back on the shelf ‘nude’, as it were.

Yes, the masking tape might leave a bit of sticky residue and yes, the figures will probably get a bit dusty. But we know it is unlikely that we use them for display as they are and if we do, we will manage to get rid of the dust and residue.

You might think I made this up, but only two days after the introduction of our new regime I had to find a body for a 19th century bolero we had to photograph. I could easily locate a suitable torso and did a very quick black jersey/pin job (with a little help from Christine). The lady who originally wore the bolero was probably a bit more busty, but the fibreglass figure definitely worked better than the dressmakers’ dummies we tried first. So, for now at least, our new method works.

Please let us know of any solutions that you have come up with or anything you think should be avoided. We are also looking into improving the storage of our 192 men’s neck ties. Any suggestions would be very, very gratefully received. We have some ideas we will try out but they seem very labour-intensive. We are particularly keen on any suggestions that will make it easy to see at least part of the tie’s pattern.

PS: We will get back to the previous owner of the Chéruit dress and some of her other possessions shortly.

I never know whether I should talk about objects that are not in rude health. I guess most of you suspect that we have the odd thing that is more than a little worse for wear or for storage. Many of these objects are nevertheless beautiful, maybe even more so because they are slightly withered and so obviously belong to a moment long gone.

Despite many odds, we are continuously improving the storage of the clothes in our care, I hasten to add. I often take out, say, a dress for a visitor only to realise that it does not have the right cover, is not on the right hanger, should not be hanging at all and/or might benefit from a stint in the freezer. Usually this happens when I really, really don’t have time for this kind of thing but nevertheless I almost always end up repacking. I cannot sleep if I don’t (I’ve tried, it doesn’t work).

I don’t quite remember how I first came across the gown you see a detail of above. Perhaps it was stored in one of our old boxes and folded more than it should have been. I think I ‘found’ the dress, rehoused it, was very excited for a short while and then something else must have happened. When a researcher recently requested highly embellished Edwardiana, it all came back to me.

Imagine my delight, twice over, when I realised/remembered that we had a dress by Chéruit! Before we continue, let’s get that pronunciation thing sorted. I always used to pronounce the ‘t’ and also went for ‘oooeeeh’ as in ‘Louis’. However, and I’m still not entirely sure about this as I never really got the hang of the phonetic alphabet, I am now inclined to believe that one should say something like ‘chérie’, which is much more lovely.

Claiming that I ‘always’ pronounced Chéruit in a certain way gives the impression that the name was on my lips practically every day. Far from it. I had been only vaguely aware of this French house, most likely on account of the lovely Steichen photo of Marion Morhouse. I became more interested recently when rereading Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies. I was using the novel as an anchor point for discussing clothes between the wars. Vile Bodies, published in 1930, might not be everyone’s first choice for that kind of purpose but then I quite like those novels you really have to scavenger for allusions and references to dress, beauty ideals and such like, rather than the ones that lay it all out for you (please don’t ever make me read American Psycho again!).

Chéruit is the only couturier mentioned by Waugh, I think, and appears when Miss Mouse attends a party at Archie Schwert’s in ‘a very enterprising frock’ by the couturier. Proust also namechecks Chéruit, referring to an earlier time. His character Elstir states that ‘there are very few good couturiers at present, one or two only, Callot – although they go in rather too freely for lace – Doucet, Chéruit, Paquin sometimes. But all the others are ghastly’. (In Search of Lost Time, Part Two: Place-Names: The Place, Vintage 2005, p. 555).

But let’s get back to our dress. When I repacked it, I just laid it carefully into a long box without much re-arranging. In those situations it’s a toss-up between potentially damaging an already fragile object by too much handling, or damaging it by not arranging it in the most beneficial way. That I favoured less handling means that it is hard to see the gown’s shape properly, which also makes it difficult to date it (I’d love to see it on a figure but I doubt that will happen soon).

The dress was part of a group of objects that were donated to the museum during the war, in 1942. Unsurprisingly, the documentation from that period is often a bit sketchy. In our register (there is no file), this particular object is described as an ‘evening gown in white net over a foundation of white chiffon + white satin, blue satin sash. The dress is embroidered with heavy [?], dull silver paillettes, the larger ones in the shape of shells [illegible] mother-of-pearl sequins 1910?’. While experience has shown that one cannot always trust the register, the date seems to make sense.

In search of further clues, I decided to do some super-careful handling after all to photograph the label, annoyingly quite badly, as usual (I will have to do some sort of course, it is getting ridiculous). You might just about be able to make out the following: ‘Ancienne M.on Raudnitz & Cie / CHERUIT / 21, Place Vendôme, Paris’. Once you’ve perused the Wikipedia entry on Chéruit (assuming you might not have done this on a previous occasion), you will see that the company, and the labels, underwent many transformations and that there remain quite a few known unknowns.

Madeleine Chéruit herself sounds pretty amazing and I am surprised that there is not more about her and/or her company but I suspect her story is more well-known in France. This book seems to have vital information but I have not yet got hold of it: Guillaume Garnier, Annie Sagalow, Fabienne Falluel, Paris-couture-année trente, Musée de la mode et du costume, Musée Galliéra 1987. In the meantime, I’ve put together a Pinterest board with the Chéruit labels I could find online, half for research purposes and half to see whether Pinterest is for me (so far I don’t seem to have the stamina for making boards, but many others are putting together super useful and beautiful stuff). This is the story I have pieced together so far:

Aforementioned fabulous Madeleine Chéruit took over a Paris company by the name of Raudnitz, also mentioned by Proust (what is the equivalent of being mentioned by Proust today, I wonder):

To change the subject, Mme Swann turned to Mme Cottard: “But you’re looking very elegant today. Redfern fecit?” “No, you know, I always swear by Raudnitz. Besides, it’s only an old thing I’ve had done up.” “Well, it’s very smart!” (In Search of Lost Time, Part Two: Place Names: The Place, Vintage 2005, pp. 201-2).

Apart from demonstrating that women’s reactions to compliments about their wardrobe have not changed much, this snippet is probably supposed to say something about Mmes Swann or Cottard, one of them is probably meant to look old-fashioned. But which one? Be that as it may, the quote lead me to an issue of the Bulletin of the Society of Friends of Marcel Proust and Friends of Combray, where it is stated (on page 510) that at the end of the 19th century two couture houses by the name of Raudnitz operated in Paris (if this came up in a crime novel, you would not believe it). Ernest Raudnitz, founded in 1883, was based at 8, rue Royale and Raudnitz et Cie, founded in 1875(-ish) at 21, Place Vendôme (both companies had different addresses at different times but let’s not dwell).

In around 1901, Madeleine Chéruit and a certain “Huet” took over the Vendôme Raudnitz and for a while the labels read ‘Huet & Chéruit’ with a reference to the former house, or ‘ancienne maison’ of Raudnitz. At some point Huet, who was apparently Madeleine’s sister, disappeared and only Chéruit remained. Our dress falls clearly into that period but when exactly this started or ended is not entirely obvious. Bits and pieces of information seem to suggest we are talking about 1905ish to 1915ish, which seems about right for our dress. I would have put my money on 1910-12 on account of the high waist.

That’s all we needed to know, really, but of course my curiosity did not stop here, so let’s just go all the way. Around 1915 Chéruit is taken over by a certain Mme Wormser, probably Julie Wormser, and Louise Boulanger and both dutifully appear on yet another incarnation of the label. Boulanger seems to have left around 1920 and set up her own salon in 1927. Mme Wormser continued and one label, probably from the 1920s, suggests that she set up shop(s) in fashionable Biarritz and Deauville. In 1932 Mme Wormser is mentioned in L’Officiel de la Mode (no. 136, 1932, page 15) as ‘directrice et propriétaire de la Maison Chéruit’, having just been made a Knight of the Legion of Honour (I don’t need to tell you that this is quite something). In 1935, after Madeleine Chéruit’s death earlier in the year, Schiaparelli took over 21, Place Vendôme and this is where our story ends. For now.

Our next investigative subject will be the former wearer of the gown, who turned out to be a bit of a known unknown herself, before having a closer look at the very unusual embroidery. À bientôt!

PS: I know it has been a long time but, honest, there were rather a lot of things to do and quite a few people to see and smile-inducing videos to watch and footballers’ tattoos to wonder about …

Sis said John wants to take Irene out. Never saw him today. Bought Cigarettes. Saw Ernie.

This is the first entry in Gladys Sandford’s 1942 diary and it could hardly be any more intriguing. Does John really want to take Irene out? Is that why Gladys did not see him that day? Maybe Sis has the wrong information? And who is Ernie?

Gladys continued to write gems like the one above over the next four years. The little pocket diaries she liked (could afford?) did not provide much space and her notes are usually brief. Almost like a tweet. Well, that’s what we thought and today we are going to start publishing a selection of Gladys’ diary entries on Twitter and Facebook.

There is a reason why we have chosen 14 February. Questions of love preoccupy Gladys but then, she is a teenager. When she begins to take notes of her life, Gladys is only 17. By the time she puts her diaries aside, at the end of 1945, Gladys is 21 and married. But who did she marry: John, Ernie, Patsy, George, Bill, Alf, the milkman or any of her other admirers? Gladys was a popular girl.

A few things you should know: Gladys was born on 9 January 1924, the youngest of the five children of Thomas Mark Sandford and his wife Maude (née Howard). She attended the local Cobourg Road School in Camberwell and sits second from right in the front row (near the elephant) in this photo taken in 1931.

The Sandfords were not not rich as evidenced by Gladys’ brief account of her early life (this is also transcribed below).

My Childhood.
I was born at 43 Dartnell Rd Camberwell.
We were a poor family. Five of us shared one bedroom. Three girls and two boys.
We had no toys at Christmas. Doll [Gladys’ sister] and I used to dress clothes pegs up as dolls.
I started school at three years. Often I used to run home. Our dad used to strap me with his belt. So I never repeated that too often. Only our brothers were allowed to have fish and chips. How we envied them. We used to suck the bones after.
Monday used to be Mum’s washday. It was done in an old copper which had to have a fire lit underneath. We were bathed also in it. I dreaded it to think of the fire.
So on Mondays it was cold meat and pickles. We took a jar to the local shop to get the pickle which was sold loose. It wasn’t all doom and gloom. We had plenty of friends. As the weather improved, we used to go round the next turnings as they had lovely gardens and make a display of grass stones & small flowers then say to passers-by: please remember our grotto.
I wasn’t christened until I was seven, only because the lady in the middle flat had a baby so mum had me christened the same day as the baby. In the summer it used to be debugging time. All the mattresses used to be taken into the garden, scrubbed down with boiling water and the bugs never stood a chance.
Sometimes a man would come down the street with a horse pulling a small roundabout. The price was one jam jar. I wonder what he did with them?
Dad was a horse keeper at Blackfriars so as we got older, Doll an I used to have to take his Sunday dinner to him after we had ours. We took it in his office, then looked at the horses. They were in a long row, each in a small partition. When they kicked out we were terrified. When mum used to go she would feed them by putting bread in their trough, but we were too scared.
When I was eleven we moved to Tower Bridge Rd but that is another story.

Sadly the narratives stops here and we do not know when the family moved to 328 Rotherhithe New Road in Bermondsey, SE 16. It is this address, where Gladys lives with her parents and her three-year older sister Dorothy May, or Dolly, that Gladys records in her 1942 diary. Below are Dolly, a friend (Sis?) and Gladys probably during an outing to the seaside a few years earlier.

You will also meet Gladys’ sister Maude Ruth, or Maudie, who must have been around 23 in 1942, has left the family home but often drops in for visits. Gladys’ brother Edward or Ted, born in 1915, also lives elsewhere, but appears frequently. We do not hear much about Gladys’ oldest brother Thomas, known as Jim, born in 1913. But then we have not yet mentioned the War, which of course left its mark on the life of Gladys and her family. (Thomas/Jim survived and the accounts of his war experiences are now kept at the Imperial War Museum.)

Many others are mentioned, not least the mysterious Mrs Palmer. If you know anything about them, please get in touch.

Here is quick rundown of some of the things that happen to Gladys between 1 January and 14 February 1942 when we will pick up the story. She

• buys pyjamas for 10 shillings 10 pence (3 January)
• thinks that she could fall for Patsy despite (or maybe because?) the fact that she has been with John for a year (5 January)
• turns 18 (9 January)
• gets her friend Lil to tell John that she does not want to see him anymore (12 January)
• has a very memorable 16 January:
  Irene wrote to John. Saw Patsy he called out and smiled. George is wild because I am going out with Ernie. So is Billy. Went to pictures with Ernie. Spoke to Arther [sic] in cafe. Ernie isnt [sic] sacked now.
• has a very memorable 17 January:
  Told George I was going out with him. Ernie was wild so & go drank so I am going out with him. Saw John. He is nearly called up. All kept on smiling at me. Met Ernie in cafe we went to pictures. I made him cocoa when we came home. Then I saw him to bus. He said lovely things.
• is being kissed by George, Arthur and Ernie (not simultaneously!)
• writes to and receives several letters from Mrs Palmer and
• wonders whether she loves Ernie or John (3 February).

Gladys also goes to the pictures a lot, washes her hair and buys, is given and smokes quite a few cigarettes.

Please check our twitter feed and Facebook page to find out what happens next.

Oh dear. I completely forgot that I had planned to say a few more words about our – alleged – child’s acrobat costume from around 1860. Here’s a quick reminder of what I’m talking about.

We did establish that it is very much in keeping with fashionable aerialist wear of the period. Now that we’ve looked at the shape, let’s examine some of the details. I am fascinated by the spangles with their concentric rings and little notches.

In 1865 the Boston weekly Littell’s Living Age, some sort of Reader’s Digest, re-published a short article that had previously appeared in the Daily Telegraph on the subject of spangles used in harlequin outfits (obviously a hot topic). The writer describes the making of the ‘little flat, circular, shining piece of metal, with a hole in the centre, and a scarcely perceptible slit on one side’.

Apparently, plated copper wire from Germany was drawn out and twisted around a ‘mandrel’ (some sort of cylindrical rod). The resulting tight spiral was cut into rings, which were flattened with a hammer or by machine. Physics is not my strong point, but I guess smashing the ring accounts for the concentric circles which must develop when the metal expands outwards, if you see what I mean (please correct me, if that’s just too idiotic).

I realise that observations on small pieces of flattened metal do not get us very far, but maybe the metal buttons will? They bear two different inscriptions: ‘Adolphus 74 Leadenhall St’ and ‘J.W. Calver Walthamstow’.

It seems that Adolphus, a Tailor and Outfitter in the City of London, went bust in 1880 (The London Gazette, 21/12/1880, page 6897). Entirely different story with James W. Calver: he was listed as a ‘Tailor and Draper’ at 338 Pembroke Road in Walthamstow in 1861, aged only 25. In 1871 he had moved to number 361 (or there had been some number reshuffling) and was still employed in the menswear trade. And profitable this seems to have been as in 1891, aged 55, Mr Calver is living on his own means (of course he might have inherited, married well, won the lottery or at the races …).

The buttons roughly confirm the 1860ish date, although they could of course have been re-used much later. ‘Re-used’ is the important word here as their presence seems to confirm my suspicion that the acrobat suit might have been a fancy dress costume made with the help of the (trouser) buttons of a male suit.

This suspicion is nurtured even more by the silver lace. It is made out of at least two different types of thread, if that’s the right word: a thin strip of metal, probably silver-plated and what is sometimes called filé – an even thinner strip of metal wound around a silk thread core. I only ever have seen this kind of lace on very grand 18th century clothing, including our very own 1853 mantua (or ‘Fanshawe dress‘, as we like to call it).

Somehow this kind of embellishment does not quite seem right for a 19th century aerialist. It seems more likely to have been removed from a piece of clothing that was part of the dressing up box of a respectable family.

Respectable and quite wealthy … I mentioned in my previous entry that the object file did not include much to write home about. Nevertheless it might be worth to talk briefly about the donor. Wouldn’t it be rather marvelous if there was a descendant out there who possessed a photograph of a little boy in a weird outfit that they had always wondered about?

The suit was donated in 1928 by a ‘Mrs John Paterson’. For so many reasons I find the custom of recording women by their husband’s name very annoying, not least as it makes research so much more difficult. However, in this case the name, the address provided in 1928 and the sad fact that the family had lost a son in the First World War meant that I could piece together a very sketchy family history. I might have got the wrong ends of various genealogical sticks but this is where it stands at the moment:

Mrs Paterson was born Freda Rose Woodhouse in December 1866 in Calcutta, India. Her father, Frederik Woodhouse, must have died not long thereafter and in 1871 Freda and her three brothers live with their aunt in Clifton, Bristol. In 1881 they are reunited with her mother Mary Jane in London. On 28 August 1889 the 22-year old Freda married the 13-years older banker, John Paterson, in Kensington. John was born in Inverness in 1853, the son of a ship owner, but seems to have moved to London some time after the 1871 census.

Freda was not even alive when the suit was supposed to have been made and/or worn. Her parents married in 1856, a little too early, and Freda’s eldest brother was probably not born before 1861. Freda’s husband, however, would have been around seven, about the right age, methinks. So what sort of festivity took place in Inverness in 1860ish, which necessitated little John to be dressed up in the über-popular outfit of an aerialist? And why was the costume kept for another 68 years or so?

Will we ever know? I don’t think it matters if we do or don’t. The acrobat suit is a lovely object and even if its precise use will escape us forever, we can be quite safe in assuming that it does reflect the popularity of aerialists in the 1860s. That’s enough for me.

Vauxhall, 1785 by Thomas Rowlandson

Pleasure gardens competed for visitors, vying with each other to offer evermore exciting entertainments. Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens offered a wide variety of entertainment, including lion-tamers, trampoline clowns, fortune tellers, ventriloquists, monkeys, dogs, jugglers, horses who danced to a waltz and fire walkers.

Tournaire's Equestrians, Vauxhall Gardens, 1846

Costumes from the Museum of London’s pleasure gardens

The Museum of London’s pleasure gardens

New Approaches to the Display of Dress
One day conference: Saturday 17 March 2012

In May 2010 we launched the Galleries of Modern London. Two curators, four conservators (some part-time) and many volunteers helped putting the 70 outfits on mannequins which took the best part of two years. Other permanent displays of dress opened or relaunched at a similar time, such as the Gallery of Costume in Manchester and the Fashion & Textile Gallery at The Bowes Museum and temporary dress exhibitions are probably more frequent and popular as ever before.

We thought this would be a good time to bring together speakers from a variety of backgrounds to share their experiences with different types of dress supports. We will look at materials to use and avoid for short-term exhibitions and permanent displays; the different ways of making ‘cut-out’ mannequins including the Body-Thèque – a collection of historic body shapes; how to create character and movement; the reasons behind the use of full-figure mannequins and the advantages and potential issues when working with artists and designers. To put it all into context the day will begin with an exploration of the history of ‘the body in the museum’.

The conference is aimed at curators, conservators, designers and project managers involved in the display of dress. You should come away with a better understanding of how best to tailor your display methods to the ‘look’ you are trying to achieve, your time and your budget. You will also have the opportunity to see more than 60 outfits and 250 accessories displayed in the new Galleries of Modern London.

Click here to download the mannequin conference programme.

Click here to download abstracts and biographies of the speakers.

Fee: £40 / 15 (concessions)

To book, please call 020 7001 9844.

Apologies for taking a while to continue with the Cole Porter song (have a quick look here, if you want to know what this is about). I did not want to start this post with a known unknown but it seems I might have to. Good news first: while waiting for inspiration I read a sentence in a novel published in 1927 that made me sit uncharacteristically upright. These two lines of the second verse suddenly made so much more sense:

Oh, I know it’s hard to waken
But your side-car has been shaken …

I originally thought that ’side-car’ referred to a ‘one-wheeled device attached to the side of a motorcycle’ (thanks, wikipedia) or other similar vehicle, which was waiting to take the awakened daughter to her restaurant. Of course it actually refers to a cocktail ‘invented’ in the early 1920s. The ingredients – Cognac, orange liqueur and lemon juice – do indeed have to be mixed in a shaker and I shall certainly try one at my earliest convenience.

The rest of verse two is pretty self-explanatory so let’s move on to number three:

Wear your parti-pantiecles,
(I love these modern fantasies)
Is that aristoc or kira sheer?
Your effect should be fantastic
In that tu-way stretch elastic
And they’re sure to like your kestos brassière.

There it is, the known unknown: what on earth are parti-pantiecles? Admittedly, there is a tiny chance that I transcribed the word wrongly – the resolution of my photo is too low to be sure. One would think for rhyming reasons it should be pantiecies, and Porter did go for ‘pantasys’ in the US version of the song, but that does not really help.

Aristoc and Kira are of course both brand names for hosiery. Aristoc was registered in 1924 by a Nottinghamshire hosiery company and is still going strong today. Kira was the name used by the silk manufacturers Brough, Nicholson & Hall for their stockings.

‘Tu-way’ stretch fabrics seem to have been a novelty in the early 1930s and were particularly used for underwear. In the 22 August 1934 issue of Vogue a Kestos brassière made of two-way stretch “Lastex” [apostrophes in original] is described as the ideal garment to wear underneath the low-backed dresses so popular during that time. Kestos was apparently the first company to develop a bra with two formed cups. The brand name was derived from the Greek cestus, the magic girdle or belt of Aphrodite that made its wearer irresistible. Originally, Kestos seems to have been a London company but the name was later used by others such as W.H. Symington & Co (Australia), which gained the rights to use the trademark.

Okay, that’s the third verse sorted. Here is the last and longest one again:

Why not try those dolcis shoes,
Not the browns, the wedgwood blues,
And that sexy airplane bustle, just for show,
In your watermelon stiebel,
You’ll make baba beaton feeble,
And I know your mink gills collar
Will make mona simply holler.
Are your ear-clips firmly on?
Dear, you look a little wan,
Why not add a blush-rose measure
And, to give your mother pleasure
Pause a moment and rehearse,
How to swing your tree-bark zipper purse,
And, darling, don’t forget
To attach your new changette.
Wear your eggplant velvet gloves,
(That’s the colour mother loves)
And your moonglow muskrat muff,
Are you sure you’re warm enough?
Where’s your dinner? At the berkeley?
Then you’d better wear your sparkly.
Now you’re forty minutes late, it’s time to go.

The Wedgwood blue Dolcis shoes should not need any explanation (Eleanor blue – after Mrs Roosevelt – Pedemode shoes in the American version). The ’sexy airplane bustle’ almost turned into another parti-pantiecle until I came across a report from the workroom of the French couturier Jean Patou published in The Sydney Morning Herald on 1 March 1934 (page 35):

Here’s Patou’s newest conceit – the airplane bustle, carried out in stiffened diaphanous black net. It gives the wearer that “wind-blow” appearance so essential to the mode just now. Either one must be at the mercy of a headwind or a following wind nowadays. One wonders how the wearer rises above her flounce for sitting down, but of course one must not display a too morbid interest in such problems.

Oh no, one definitely mustn’t!

In the fourth line of this verse we find out why the lyrics were stuck into Victor Stiebel’s press book in the first place: he has produced a dress that will make Cecil Beaton’s sister Baba feeble. Watermelon pink seems to have been a popular colour in the 1930s and was located somewhere between what I would call fuchsia and coral.

I should think that a fur collar made of the throats and necks of minks would make Mona (presumably the Mona Lisa) weep, rather than holler. Fur was super-fashionable in the 1920s and 30s and a moonglow muskrat muff is mentioned later on. Vogue recommended the pelt of the North American muskrat for coats and motor robes in the issue published on 19 September 1934. If you really want to, you can still find quite a few muskrat muffs online.

Just two accessories to go: The use of zips in fashion was still quite a new thing in the early 1930s and, according to some sources, so was the transformation of treebark into fabric. Schiaparelli wrote of her close collaboration with ‘the textile people’ in her autobiography and claimed ‘to have launched a myriad of novelties’ such as ‘tree bark, cellophane, straw, and even glass’ (Shocking Life, V&A edition, page 61). I wonder whether she meant fabric crinkled to look like treebark, which the designer seems to have developed with the Lyon textile manufacturer Colcombet. L’Officiel de la Mode reported in 1935 that Colcombet had presented a ‘rough crepe’ called Écorce d’Olivier, or Olive Tree Bark. In 1938, too late for this song, Schiaparelli made a dress of silk printed to resemble treebark (for some reason I cannot link to an example directly, search for ‘Schiaparelli’ here, and it should come up).

Now to one of my favourite things: the changette. In July 1932 Nina Skidelsky of Stratford Connecticut and Woldemar A. Barry of New York applied for a patent for a brooch-cum-container.

The patent application was refined in 1933 and a new drawing was filed, see above. Skidelsky and Barry explained that

The object of our invention is to combine in a single article of manufacture an attractive decorative device primarily for the purpose of adornment, having a thin metal panel which will partially, and in some cases entirely, conceals a thin, flat receptacle for money or small change, which receptacle can manually open and close quickly but will for the most part be unnoticed by the eye of the uninitiated.

Changettes must be quite rare by now. The example below was recently for sale on ebay.

I cannot quite picture the young lady envisioned by Cole Porter and I am not sure I really want to. Watermelon pink dress, mink gills collar, muskrat fur muff, changette, treebark purse, Wedgwood blue shoes? Whatever she may look like, she is now ready for dinner at the Berkeley Hotel, until the early 1970s situated at the corner of Piccadilly and Berkeley Street, more or less opposite the Ritz. Let’s hope she has a good time.

Baby poutz and parti-pantiecles are still up for grabs. If you can turn these known unknowns into known knowns, please get in touch.